A key focus of this blog is the history of Jacksons in Ireland. I am specially curious about those who may be related to Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1915). His life is key to understanding how a dozen or so young men, sons of Irish tenant farmers, shaped the future of international banking in the Far East in the late 1800s. I also use this blog as a place for playful posts: book and restaurant reviews, recipes, and events in my life. WARNING: Note the date of each post. Some may be outdated.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Inching Towards Kildare

Last fall, two retired military officers of the King’s Own
Royal Regiment met at a regimental dinner somewhere in England. Weeks later my
brain went into total overdrive. The connection was somewhat akin to how a
butterfly can flap its wings and halfway around the world, a major shift in
consciousness results.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite on that scale, but it did feel
akin to that.

One of these men was retired Major Pat Roberts, a grandson
of Amy Oliver Jackson, and hence a great-grandson of Sir Thomas Jackson. The
other was retired Major John Jackson. One of his ancestors, a man who may have
been related to Sir Thomas, was a Thomas Jackson of Co. Kildare, one of King
Billy’s men, who supposedly met his end by falling off his horse in 1690 at the
Battle of the Boyne.

My link with these two retired army men is my obsession with
Jackson research and more recently with Co. Kildare. Unfortunately, what I know
about Co. Kildare could be poured into a thimble without any risk of its ever
overflowing. This is too bad because Co. Kildare is also the epicentre of one
of the remaining unanswered questions that I have concerning Sir Thomas: Did he have a farm in Co. Kildare, and if he
did, where was it?

This is not just an idle question. We do know that Sir
Thomas (1841-1915) hired Patrick Lynch (1832-1913) to be his farm manager at Cavananore
in the early 1890s. We also know that this Patrick Lynch, who was born in Co.
Kildare, was a widower, and arrived to work the Cavananore farm with his son,
also named Patrick. The story goes one step further and that’s the part that I
can’t yet prove: Patrick Lynch had been
running a farm belonging to Sir Thomas which was down in Co. Kildare.

There are many lines of Jacksons in Ireland. Some of these
Jacksons were Quaker farmers; some were members of the upper crust and were known
to be landlords, legislators and such; while others were known to have been shipped
out of the country as a consequence of their seditious acts in the late 1790s. Some individuals with the surname of
Jackson were guilty of all three of the above. It seems pretty clear from the
surviving family letters written to Sir Thomas that his mother knew a whole lot
more about which line of Jacksons was theirs than I do.

Depending on how the family history shakes down, it is
possible that Sir Thomas’s rise from being the son of a marginal, gentleman
farmer to becoming a baronet was regarded as a redressing of past misfortunes.
On the other hand, if his Jacksons had never been anything more than modestly
successful farmers, his knighting may have been regarded as a stroke of either
blind luck, or divine intervention.

A few days after the two retired majors had chewed over
their family connections, I received an email with ten generations of the
Kildare Jackson’s family tree included. It had been assembled by Archdeacon James
Marcus Neville Jackson of Toronto, who was an uncle of Major John Jackson. This
tree was a darned good start. It made me
scrutinize all the locations where these Kildare Jacksons had either lived or
held leases in the hope that one of them would lead to Sir Thomas’ farm.

I used our pool table to lay out all the maps I needed to make sense of this.

Since the mid 1600s, Jacksons have had roots in townlands
such as Ballynagussane, in baronies with
names such as Narragh and Reban East.
These names do not trip lightly off the tongue of people like myself, a
Canadian living on the west coast. Then again, we are quite at home with names
such as Skookumchuck, so there you go.
The Irish townland names have a rich complex history that goes back and forth
between the two languages: Irish and English, much of which can be explored at
the Placenames Database of Ireland .

The lands of Athgarvan
and Kennagh are two of the townlands
that these Kildare Jacksons were supposedly granted for services under William
III. Sometime afterwards, they built the Stone House of Monistrevan aka Monastereven.
Not that I know anything about The Stone
House, but just because this is merely a story, doesn’t mean that it either is
or isn’t true.

As you can see, this kind of research is not exactly
straightforward. It was reasonably easy to track down the townland of Athgarvan, now known as Blackrath and Athgarvan. It is in the Parish
of Greatconnell, Barony of Connell, Co. Kildare. When it came to tracking some
of the other townlands, computer searches were not much help. The spelling of
many names has shifted over time, and, for example, the townland of Kennagh morphed into Kineagh. It can now be found in the parish
of Kilcullen, and the barony of Kilcullen,
Co. Kildare.

It was only by tracking these townlands that I could learn that
the barony of Kilcullen is in fact on
the Northern border of Narragh &
Reban East. This makes it more likely that the story of these two townlands being
granted together to the late 1600s Jacksons will hold up. Form here, it is
worth noting that some townlands that are now in Co. Kildare were once included
in Co. Wicklow, and vice versa. This is only one of many reasons that a farmer
could easily farm lands in several counties.

One other complication to bear in mind when trying to solve
this kind of puzzle is that: Just because
two Jacksons are living beside each other, and their families have done so for
centuries, doesn’t mean that they are related. It is not impossible to find
two entirely different Thomas Jacksons living side by each in the same
townland, and to find that both of them have fathers called William, and then to
find out that they are not even remotely related. It doesn’t even take a cuckold in the sack to
make this happen.

So where am I now? I still haven’t found Sir Thomas’ farm,
but perhaps other readers of this post might be able to lend a hand. As part of
my research, I have produced a number of documents that are likely to be
helpful to those pursuing quite different Jackson-related quests. It is also possible
that in their hands, we may even stumble upon the truth. Blind luck is best assisted
by continually keeping one’s eyes and mind open. Good luck to all.

NOTE: These links beneath to
data on my website will contain updates as I learn more. I still have much more
Jackson-related deeds research to transcribe.

This page on Wicklow & Wexford also includes some
sightings in Kildare – particularly the mention of the townland of Bull Hill.
It is on the southern border of the townland of Davidstown.

About Me

Author And Researcher. I am currently writing a book on the life of Sir Thomas Jackson. He was the son of tenant farmers, born just before the Famine in South Armagh, who was knighted because he not only lead HSBC into the 20th Century, but was also responsible for assisting with the funding of much of the economic development in China & Japan in the late 1800s. My first published book was "Some Become Flowers: Living with Dying at Home".